


Paired

by 26stars



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angel/Demon Relationship, Gen, angel devil au, just the beginning at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 03:22:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21172598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/pseuds/26stars
Summary: Every human born is commissioned an Angel of Light to guard them against the schemes of the Enemy and lead them out of darkness.The opposing team also sends their best defender.





	Paired

**Author's Note:**

  * For [agentmmayy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentmmayy/gifts).

> I have not seen Good Omens but it's my impression that it has a similar vibe to this--any overlap is just coincidence.

No one gets their orders in advance—a soul is birthed, and One of them appears on site immediately. There is always a bit of a crowd—the Pair of the mother, usually also the Pair of the father or second parent, the Pairs of the people helping a mother bring a new life out of herself and into the world. The Pairs do not interact with other Pairs. It is forbidden and Impossible, though understood conspiracy can occur when the halves of each pair share a common goal…

This is not Melinda’s first assignment—there have been thousands; there will be thousands more—but this one has her full attention from the beginning. The pair is odd for a few reasons, the first being that they are relatively alone. No extended family helps them as the father catches the baby, lifting his daughter out of her mother and into the world as she gasps her first breath and releases her first cry. No friends praise the mother as she finally slumps, exhausted and relieved, to the kitchen floor, no medical staff attends to the mother or congratulates them on their first child. They are alone in their own small house in a darkened corner of China, only a concerned neighbor stepping in as an unofficial midwife, generations older and with many more births in her resume, who now unnecessarily instructs the father, himself a doctor, on how to tie off the cord as she holds out a blanket to receive the infant in her first embrace.

Melinda watches the familiar scene of expressed joy and unspoken panic as two people become three, as a young man and woman become a mother and father, a milestone that will change their lives forever. As the man attends to his baby and wife, Melinda glances up at the audience invisible to the mortals, three other Pairs who have accompanied the adults for their entire existences. They all silently acknowledge one another, temporary partners in crime, and finally, Melinda looks for her new Opponent.

The eighth One in the room has followed the infant as it was carried to a prepared basin of warm water for washing, already crowding close in a protective manner, her primary task from now until she fails. As always, it hurts Melinda’s eyes to look at her new Opponent, fresh from the Presence and still radiant with Glory. Her eyes are accustomed to a different dark, a deeper dark, one that loathes this brightness almost as much as its Source. The radiance will fade; it always does—but for now, her Opponent dazzles in the darkness, the Omen of a new beginning.

The baby is returned to the tired woman, and Melinda watches the matchless moment of daughter and mother seeing one another face to face for the first time, their relationship as pure as it will never be again. The Other bows over them both, casting her wings down to repel Melinda, as she must know it will, but Melinda lifts her own dark wings against the brightness and only draws back far enough to glower up at her like a snake staring up at a human—physically incomparable but equally deadly for entirely different reasons. Their Tasks are never to destroy one another—only One, The One, can do that. But they have each their own strengths and limitations, each their own experiences and expertise, and they are always Matched as evenly as possible.

Melinda is good at her job. She can only assume this One is too.

As the mother gazes at her baby, two humans now bonded for life (but not eternity), Melinda meets the eyes of the One with whom she will share the mortal’s journey, her visible Challenger for as long as this human’s life lasts.

This One’s eyes wield experience and the fresh determination that Glory tends to endow. She’s positively brazen in her fearlessness, which only makes Melinda glare harder as she lifts her chin in a wordless opening volley, the warning rattle of a snake's tail.

_Game on. _

**Author's Note:**

> It's my understanding that angels technically have no gender, but since Melinda and Bobbi are both females in their canon I just left their pronouns as is.


End file.
